Mt. Whitney Portal Store & Hostel Forums General Mt. Whitney Portal Store Message Board Ingrown toe nails

I've been here before with plantar facitiis and you all helped and I no loner suffer from that. I was able to get back to hiking and lost 32 lbs. (probably helped get rid of the plantaar facitiis, huh?)
The question I now have is what cause the recurring of ingrown toe nails as I see my podiatrist every 3 months. He says shoes. my wife says it's the way the nails are cut but all I know is that I am now limping around and don't want to walk anywhere. The doctor says surgery but don't they all say that?
Help?!?!

Hi, I had a serious problem with persistent ingrown toenails for years - very painful requiring many trips to the podiatrist. I also had intractable fungus under the nails. I finally got rid of both problems in one stroke by having my nails surgically removed. It was outpatient surgery with very little recovery time. That was many (20-25?) years ago. In the past few years some of the nails have started growing back in but that's not really a problem. The lack of toenails has never been a limitation on my hiking.

After 7, yes 7 nail removal procedures, the doctor finally did a procedure where they killed the root. I haven't had a problem since. I know how painful these damn things are, but have not had any issues since. Good luck!

I've been concerned about developing ingrown toenails (onychocryptosis). I suspect it is related to footwear. According to one old study conducted in China and India, barefoot people never suffer from onychocryptosis.

http://refs.ahcuah.com/papers/shulman.htm

"No instances among the barefoot feet were found of: Onychocryptosis, Hyperidrosis, Bromidrosis, Hallux Valgus, Hallux Varus, Bursitis at the first or fifth metatarso phalangeal articulations.

Without footgear that interferes with nail growth, and because these people allowed their toenails to grow long and did not have the habit of digging into the corners of their nails when cutting them, onychocryptosis did not form even when nails were malformed. The resulting complete absence of onychocryptosis should serve to prove that proper nail care plus nonrestrictive footgear are all that is necessary to prevent the condition even in the presence of congenital nail malformations that are considered predisposing factors."

I'm not a doctor, but perhaps you could try a few things, like switching to hiking sandals with very little or no arch support. You might be surprised at how comfortable they are.

Sean, that may be good advice for people whose feet aren't already messed up but by the time I was a tween and starting to make my own decisions about what to put on my feet I already had hammer toes and other foot woes. No podiatrist has been able to say whether my hammer toes were congenital or the result of, for example, wearing shoes that too small when I was a child. Since I was a child during WWII when shoes were rationed it is very possible that my shoes weren't changed for the next larger size often enough. In any case, I have hiked through life with boogered up toes, bunions, and other bad stuff. Without custom orthotics I wouldn't be hiking at all so hiking sandals aren't an option for me. That may be true for many people who already have ingrown toenails - good advice but way too late to do any good.

On a related tangent - I offer a belated apology to the people I hiked with during the AsABat memmorial last year. For one thing, I shouldn't have done the return with the "heavies" (Kurt, Laura, Rosabella, etc.)(but maybe Kurt should have warned me off when I asked him about going with that group instead of the others) but the worst thing was that my boots didn't fit right (my feet change a lot over time and the perfect boot one year doesn't work the next) and by the time we returned I had a Curt Schilling bloody sock. So, my apologies and thanks to the people I held up on that hike.

Thanks to all. I'm going to have the procedure to kill the root. I am really over the pain.